Award Winners / Artist Profile

Hilary Field

About the Artist

Hilary Field (Seattle) is an international performing artist and composer and has garnered praise for her dynamic virtuosity, her sensitive musicianship, and for the emotional depth she brings to the heart of classical guitar music. Hilary has held faculty positions as the head of the Guitar department at Seattle Pacific University and Pacific Lutheran University in Washington State. Hilary is a past winner of the Northwest Young Artist Series Competition and was the first guitarist to win the Frances Walton Soloist Competition. She has released several award winning CDs, including her debut recording, Music of Spain and Latin America, which was an award winner for Classical Album of the Year by the National Association of Independent Record Distributors. Hilary was recently sponsored by the US Embassy to perform and tour in South America, and has been a featured performer in international guitar festivals throughout the world.

Hilary received a 2017 GAP Award for her project "Ode to Hope: New Guitar Music and Poetry of the Americas." Inspired by her concert tour of Chile and the honor of performing at Pablo Neruda House, Hilary will compose classical guitar music based on Neruda's poem "Oda a la Esperanza" (Ode to Hope.) The project will be a collaboration with Claudia Castro-Luna, Seattle's Civic Poet (2015-2017), who will contribute new poetry on the theme "Ode to Hope." Hilary will also compose classical guitar music based on Claudia's poems, integrating the musical language of the poetry with the expressive phrasing of the classical guitar. They will offer free, bilingual public performances that weave poetry and spoken word art forms with the sounds of the classical guitar, crossing genres, and mixing elements of classical, jazz, and folk music to underscore the natural pulse and sentiment of the poems, while embracing the timeless and timely theme of hope.

Information included above was provided by artist at the time of application.

From the Artist

I am extremely grateful to Artist Trust for funding for this project. The GAP award allows me time to focus on composing and creating new works. I am excited to hear the many interpretations on the theme of hope, and to be a part of a meaningful dialogue between the artists and the audience through the love of the arts.